Austin wakes her up by flicking her forehead repeatedly. She opens her eyes and sits up, preparing to snap at him, but then she sees a sleeping Daisy right next to her and decides to save it for later.
"What?" she whispers, looking up at him.
"I can't sleep and I don't wanna be alone," he says.
She sighs, closing her eyes and running a hand through her hair. "You woke me up because you were lonely?"
"I thought we could talk. Maybe come up with a plan without worrying about Daisy distracting us or getting scared."
"The brain functions best after adequate sleep."
"I'm sorry for waking you up."
She presses her lips together. "Any new ideas?"
The blonde boy shakes his head. "I'm wracking my brain, honest. But now that we know I can get up into that tube and use some of my powers, maybe we can revisit some of our old plans that we scrapped since I didn't have magic."
Daisy shifts in her sleep. Ally stands up, grabs Austin's wrist, and drags him to the back corner of the cell, as far away from Daisy as possible. She feels his eyes on her the whole time. His hands are shaking.
She sits down against the wall, pulling him with her. Then she looks at him, examines the tension in his face and the worry in his eyes. She grabs his hands and presses his palms against each other. He looks down at them and then back up at her.
"We're going to get out of here. Freaking out is only going to disrupt your ability to think rationally."
"I'm not freaking out," he says quietly.
She gives him a look. "And I'm not a Scientist," she replies.
He bites his lip and looks down at his lap. She lets go of his hands and watches him take a deep breath.
"Do you know how long we've been in here?" he asks her after a while.
"No."
"Neither do I. And every day we spend in here is one less day we have to find Dez before they…do whatever they're going to do to him."
"I know," she says. "So we need to think of a way to escape. But to do that, we need to be calm and think logically. What are some things we thought of before that needed magic?"
"Me trying to find another animal to help us."
"That would be risky. Any of them could be patrols. What about breaking the bars?"
Austin shakes his head. "My magic is still weak up in that tube. I don't think I'll be able to do anything to the crystals themselves. Maybe I could wait in the tube and keep the trapdoor open when they send down food."
"They'd immediately know we were trying to escape."
"You're right." He looks down for a moment, then back up at her. "We could send Daisy up. She could turn into something they wouldn't notice, like an insect, and then hide until the guards leave. Then at least she could get out and get home, and maybe send some not-evil animals to help us."
"I like that idea," Ally says. "We need to get her safe before we try escaping ourselves."
Austin nods. "And they don't even know she's here. It shouldn't be too hard for her to get out unnoticed. Besides, she's a smart girl."
Ally looks across the cell at the peacefully sleeping Daisy. "Yes, she is. Although it was quite foolish of her to just come running in with no plan."
"She's not gonna want to leave without us," Austin tells her.
She looks at him again. "I'm sure she'll be fine knowing that she'll be safe."
Austin shakes his head. "We can't tell her the actual plan. She won't go through with it if she knows we're not going with her."
"Why not? Her own self-preservation should be plenty of incentive to get out without us."
Austin rolls his eyes. "Ally, some of us are human enough to care about other people and do stupid things to be with those people."
"Daisy's a child. Her sense of morals hasn't fully developed yet. At her age, children are only really concerned with themselves."
"She doesn't need morals. She loves us. And if she's so concerned with herself, then we can make the argument that being with us is in her own self-interest because she would be devastated if she never saw us again."
Ally gives him a look. "Which one of us is a Psychology Specialist? I know what I'm talking about."
Austin shifts so he's on his knees and sitting back on his heels, looking down at her with a strange look of earnest. "I don't doubt that you do. I'm sure you know the science of the mind and how it works inside-out and upside-down. But the thing is, humans don't always operate scientifically. We have emotions and thoughts and imaginations – "
"I know that. I'm still human, you know."
Austin exhales in frustration and grabs her by the shoulders. "Ally, listen to me. Humans are the smartest species in the world. But we're also the dumbest. We make irrational decisions based on our emotions and we don't always fulfill science's predictions. I know you Scientists have pretty much mastered the act of choosing the most reasonable and intelligent paths in life, but you guys will never be perfect. No one is. Dez made the stupid decision of befriending a Magician. Science couldn't have predicted that, could it?"
Ally frowns. "I'm sure that he considered the consequences of becoming friends with you and believed the benefits to him outweighed them. Knowing all the variables, it probably could've been predicted – "
"What about you, huh?" Austin interrupts. "I kidnapped you. My existence has been banned by your government. You could face the same consequences as Dez if we get caught. You even said you'd turn both of us in. Morally, you could justify losing two lives to save what you thought were more. And you're smart enough to know that the best decision for your own self-preservation would be to follow the law. But here you are, in a cell with two Magicians, on an illegal quest to save your friend because he doesn't deserve to be punished even though he broke the law and you care about him."
Ally remains silent. She wonders how Austin can sound so frustrated and earnest and powerful while still speaking quietly enough to not wake Daisy. She also tries to find a fault in his argument, but she knows he's right. Does this mean she's spent her whole life learning about a flawed science? And if scientific findings in psychology can't always yield accurate predictions, how can she know what else the Scientists could be wrong about?
After a few moments, Austin speaks again, most of the frustration in his voice gone. "And correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you care about me and Daisy, too. I'm sure science would predict that you would hate us because we shouldn't be alive and it's your civic duty to turn us in. But you care about us. And I doubt you'd be willing to escape this cell alone and leave us behind."
Ally looks away from him, watching Daisy as she shifts in her sleep. "So what are we gonna tell her?" she asks quietly.
Austin drops his hands from her shoulders. "We'll tell her we have our own plan to get out that's a little riskier, so she needs to escape and get back home and we'll meet her there after we get out and save Dez."
"You think she'll believe that?"
"She's still a kid. And she trusts us."
Ally takes a deep breath and nods, looking over at Austin. He's sitting against the wall next to her again, his eyes still on Daisy. But then he turns his head to look at her, his face much closer to hers than she anticipated. His brown eyes sparkle as if his magic is hiding in his irises.
"Just for the record, I care about you too," he tells her.
Her heart pounds. Not right now. We need to focus.
She nods a little faster than normal. "I know." She hates the way her voice cracks as her heart pounds again.
Then he leans the back of his head against the wall, facing Daisy again, and closes his eyes. Ally does the same, taking deep breaths and reciting the periodic table in her head to calm herself down.
Hydrogen. Get a hold of yourself. Helium. You can't deal with this right now. Lithium Beryllium Boron. You can't deal with this ever. Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen. Is there less Oxygen in here than there was before? That's ridiculous. Why can't you breathe? Fluorine. Neon. No emotions. Sodium. Science is factual, practical. Magnesium. But humans aren't. Aluminum Silicon Phosphorus Sulfur. Nonononono. Chlorine. You're incompatible in every way. Your friendship – Argon – is rocky at best. Potassium. Calcium. You don't have feelings for him. You can't. Push them back push them back. What comes next? You've known the periodic table by heart since before you could ride a bike. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.
Her breathing picks up again as she wracks her brain for the next element. Austin's arm brushing against hers doesn't make anything easier. She risks peeking over at him.
His eyes are still closed, and his mouth is hanging open slightly. His knees are pulled up to his chest and one arm rests on them while the other supports him on the ground next to her.
She shifts, accidentally bumping his arm hard enough that he might wake up. He stays fast asleep, though, so she closes her eyes again, taking another deep breath.
Suddenly she feels his hand on top of hers on the ground. Her heart pounds again and she looks over at him, but if he's awake he doesn't show it. She glances down at their hands and then tries her best to go to sleep.
Scandium. It's Scandium. She yawns, her heart rate finally slowing down. Titanium. Vanadium. You're okay. Chromium. Her head feels heavy. It drops onto his shoulder. Manganese. Iron. He cares about you. Cobalt. Nickel. Copper.
The plan is in place. Daisy knows what to do. She didn't doubt for a second that they would meet her as soon as they rescued Dez with their genius plan.
She knows their food will be sent down soon. Austin and Daisy are already hovering as close to the top of the tube as they dare so they can be ready when the time comes.
She paces the length of the cell, wringing her hands and trying to keep herself calm. Putting aside her moment of weakness last night, she's only worried about Daisy getting back to Austin's house safely. To get her mind off her worry, she tries to brainstorm ideas for her and Austin to escape once Daisy's in the clear.
Her stomach rumbles painfully. Since Daisy got here, she and Austin have each been giving half of their meals to her. And since they only get one meal per day, both of them have lost too much weight than is probably healthy. Maybe when she and Austin finally get full meals again, they'll be able to think better and figure out a way to escape.
Suddenly, she hears the familiar faint popping of the trap door opening far above her. She doesn't hear anything else, which she optimistically decides to take as a good sign. Silence means a successful escape. Right?
Before she can begin going through all the possible bad scenarios in her head, she hears the suction of the door closing again and Austin drops out of the tube holding two containers of food a couple seconds later.
She looks at him hopefully. "Well?"
"Went off without a hitch. She's okay."
Ally exhales in relief, finally relaxing after so many days of worrying about Daisy. "That's good. Good. She's okay."
Austin nods and sits on the ground. She follows suit. He opens both containers and hands her one. She starts eating its contents without risking a look at the sickening excuse for food inside.
"So," Austin says, grimacing at the taste of his first bite, "any ideas for how we can escape? Because I have one."
"Go for it."
"I could get up in the tube and try to break one of the cell walls. I think outside the dungeon is a small bit of the air pocket surrounding it and then open ocean outside of that."
Ally shakes her head. "Look around." She points to the walls, which are sparkling with minerals. "They all have the crystals embedded in them. If you can't break the bars, I doubt you'll be able to break the walls."
Austin frowns as he looks at the walls. "Well, that sucks. We'll think of something else, though."
"There's the optimism."
He smiles, and a warm feeling spreads across her chest. Once she cleans out her container of food, she stacks it in his empty one and tosses them to the corner of the room where they've acquired a nice pile of food containers.
"When we get out of here, I'm growing us a fifty-acre orchard and we're just gonna eat fruit for, like, hours," he tells her, setting a hand on the ground by his side and leaning on it. "And there'll be grape vines as far as you can see."
She lets herself give him a small smile, feeling her cheeks heat up. Stop it. She hopes he can't see the pink tint in the dim lighting of their cell. "Sounds too good to be true," she says.
He grins. "I guess we'll have to actually escape for you to find out for yourself."
Her smile spreads farther across her face before she can stop it. "I guess so."
"How do you think Dez is doing right now?" Austin asks her.
"He's probably scared. They've probably interrogated him already. Hopefully they didn't find out anything about you and he's just sitting in prison."
Austin nods. "We gotta save him, Ally."
"I know we do. But then what? When we save him, he becomes a fugitive, the government knows you exist, and I become a criminal."
"I guess we'll have to go into hiding. Nobody knows where I live, remember? We can all just stay there."
She frowns, the realization of the magnitude of what they're going to do falling over her. "I'll never see my family again."
"You can see them – "
She looks at him. "They see me, they turn me in. They're law-abiding citizens. They won't accept me caring about Dez as a valid reason to break the law."
"That's kinda sucky. They're your parents."
"Scientists push back their emotions, remember?"
"I mean, yeah, but…there are exceptions, aren't there?"
She shakes her head. "They'll turn me in." Then she takes a deep breath. "But it's okay. I'm saving my friend and a community of innocent Magicians."
Austin shoots her a small smile. "You're doing the right thing."
"Everyone else would say otherwise."
He shrugs. "Sometimes you gotta dig a little deeper under the surface and do what you think is right rather than what everyone else says is right. Everyone may say that robbing a bank is the right thing to do, but you know it's not."
Ally laughs quietly, then she freezes. "Dig. That's it."
"That's what?"
"Remember when you originally suggested we should dig out of her but I said the sand was too compact?" He nods. "Well, with your magic, it should be no problem. And there are no crystals in the sand."
Austin smiles. "You're right."
She grins. "We have a way out."
"We have a way out," he echoes. "C'mon, we've got no time to lose. Help me into the tube."
She shifts onto all fours under the tube and Austin climbs up into it yet again. A few seconds later, a neat circle of sand by the outside wall of their cell collapses in on itself to form a tunnel. Not a moment later, water fills the tunnel and floods into the cell.
"Austin, we have to leave. Now."
The blonde boy drops down from the tube, his feet splashing in the water surrounding them.
"How long can you hold your breath?" he asks her.
"I don't know."
"Good enough for me."
He grabs her hand and runs over to the tunnel, diving headfirst into the water and pulling her along with him as he swims in the darkness like a bullet. She swims along behind him without letting go of his hand, and she squeezes it tightly to tell him that she can't hold her breath much longer.
"Just hang in there," he says loud and clear, as though they're standing on land.
When they finally emerge from the tunnel into the open water, an air bubble immediately forms around them. She inhales deeply to calm her screaming lungs as they speed off in what she hopes Austin knows is the right direction.
"You can breathe underwater?" she asks him.
"I'm a Nature Magician. Of course I can breathe underwater," he mutters, his focus clearly on getting them as far away from that strange deep-sea kingdom as possible.
She decides it's best to remain silent for the remainder of their underwater trip so Austin can concentrate. With her adrenaline and surprise subsided, she realizes that they're in the dark. She breathes a sigh of relief; if they had escaped during the day, they surely would've gotten caught.
"Do you know where we are?" he asks her.
She shakes her head. "Take us to the surface."
He does as she says and they poke their heads out of the water. She sees the twinkling lights of the city on the shore a couple of miles away.
"So we're going there?" Austin points to the darkness to the left of the lit-up town.
"Yeah."
Austin nods. Then he plunges them back below the surface and they speed towards the shore. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, the events of the past few minutes hitting her all over again. She wonders if they would've been killed if they hadn't escaped in time.
Austin suddenly grabs her hand just as she stumbles on the sand suddenly under her feet. She opens her eyes and sees the sloping shore ahead of them leading to the surface. They trudge up the hill and finally emerge on the beach. Still holding hands, they walk into the woods lining the sand, and Austin creates a rock cave around them. A magical fire ignites on the ground. Ally looks at Austin, who immediately turns his head to look at her.
They simultaneously wrap their arms around each other. His grip is tight around her shoulders, and one of his hands cradles the back of her head. She takes a deep breath, accepting the fact that no matter how many elements she recites in her head, the thoughts and feelings running through her head won't go away. She doesn't know whether it's those feelings or the fact that she's exhausted or both, but she's having trouble thinking straight through the fog that seems to be clouding her mind.
He leans back to look down at her, and she lifts her head to meet his gaze. Her heart pounds. She wonders if he can hear it.
"We did it," he says, his eyes and face glowing in the warm glow of the fire.
Her foggy brain doesn't register how she responds until after she sees his reaction. His arms drop from around her and he takes a step back, looking at her in confusion. "What?"
She shivers in the absence of his warmth. "Can I kiss you?" she asked him. Out loud. With no warning. Stupid stupid stupid.
"Um – what I, um, I mean, uh – " She stumbles over her words like a child trying to learn to read. She may as well be a deer in headlights. A Scientist in firelight doesn't seem that far off.
"It's the adrenaline, yeah?" he asks her gently, over his initial shock. "We're both tired. We saved each other's lives. By tomorrow morning I'm sure you'll have some Psychology Specialist wisdom to explain it."
She hopes he can't see her red face in the darkness. "Um, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Sorry for, um, just…saying that."
"Don't worry about it," he says. "Like you said before, we're both attractive and we can't help those natural human mating urges or whatever."
"Right. Yeah. I'm just…really out of it, I guess."
"I don't blame you. We both need sleep."
She nods. "But, um, even though I'll have an explanation about this tomorrow, can we just…not talk about it?"
Austin pretends to zip his lips and walks around to the other side of the fire. "It never happened."
Stop being so calm about this. Give me a reason to stop feeling things for you. She watches him as he grows a moss of some sort to use as a bed and pillow, and then he does the same for her.
She lays down, closing her eyes immediately and trying to push her embarrassment from her mind. No feelings no distractions no feelings no distractions no feelings no distractions.
"Goodnight, Ally," she hears as she drifts off to sleep.
She wishes he had kissed her. And she hates herself for it.
hey guys i'm really tired so hopefully the end of this chapter isn't trash. i just really wanted to update bc it's getting good now. hopefully you guys liked this chapter despite the possibly questionable writing quality. i love you all and thanks for reading!